Butthole Surfers — Pinkpop Festival, Landgraaf 1996

Full concert of the Butthole Surfers filmed live at the Pinkpop Festival, on the Megaland grounds in Landgraaf, Netherlands, on 26 May 1996. The recording captures the Texan band at a career high point: just weeks earlier they had released Electriclarryland, the album that would carry the single “Pepper” to the top of the US alternative rock charts. On stage, the long-running trio of singer Gibby Haynes, guitarist Paul Leary and drummer King Coffey delivers its warped, noise-drenched brand of psychedelic rock, rooted in the American punk and experimental underground of the 1980s. Before the crowd of one of Europe’s oldest festivals, the set runs through key material such as “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave,” “Cough Syrup,” “TV Star,” “Cherub” and “Who Was in My Room Last Night?” This live footage documents the raw energy and confrontational aesthetic of a cult American underground act, shot outdoors at an edition that also featured Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine and The Prodigy. It stands as a valuable live record of the Butthole Surfers’ place in 1990s alternative rock.